


from such great heights

by portions_forfox



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, you know how I do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 05:22:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/pseuds/portions_forfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In show business, we say ‘<i>break a leg</i>.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	from such great heights

**Author's Note:**

> Written for jada_jasmine's prompt at her own [HUNGER GAMES FICATHON](http://jada-jasmine.livejournal.com/27442.html),
>
>> _**caesar flickerman + tributes** , i loved you for all of a split second once._

Finnick strikes before the show. Lurid and shiny white, his grin defies his stoic gaze, silver and serene; a new composure with the Quarter Quell. He steps in front of Caesar just outside his dressing room.

“I just wanted to tell you,” Finnick says, “good luck.” He is handsome and glossy as always, his slick smile a flood of sensory memories, hard hands and smooth skin and Snow’s paper money, crisp. Finnick’s smile says a lot of things. One of them: _I carry secrets, Flickerman. Some of them are yours_.

Caesar’s grin is just as bright -- bared teeth and heightened eyes. Brighter than Finnick’s, even. He’s been here longer, learned better.

“In show business,” he replies, cheekbones taut and the lines of his forehead high and tight, “we say, ‘ _break a leg._ ’”

“Ah,” Finnick whispers, “I’m afraid I could never say that.” He levels with Caesar, eyes bared straight on his gaze and shoulders squared. “After all, you never know what kind of show you’ll end up having.” 

Caesar’s heart pounds once, and then it stops. His grin softens, a softer smile. “You used to be so beautiful,” he says, “before they washed off all the blood.” 

Finnick grins like Caesar, manic and unmoved. “There’s always blood,” he says. 

 

 

Caesar wasn’t always here. Before him there was Hester Viorona, and before her Thressler Cade. He’s been here a long time, though. Games Announcers stay awhile. 

He wasn’t always here; in the Capitol, that is. Not a lot of people know where he comes from, and sometimes even he forgets. It’s Six. He never met his father and his mother was a morphling, died before he was ten years old. Back before he knew better he used to tell the Capitol socialites the story, and they’d laugh. “You’re a morphling orphan,” they’d tell him. “That makes you a morphlan.” He was young then. He knows better now. 

President Snow found him when he was fifteen years old inciting riots in the streets, nothing but an angry orphan with a soapbox. Trains were toppled, peacekeepers killed. Snow was forced to take notice.

“You’re good with your words,” he said, “but words don’t win the Games.” He straightened his tie in his pristine collar. “Six’s Reaping is in . . . four weeks, is it?” 

Caesar was stiff and unsmiling. This was before he’d learned. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What are you trying to say?”

Snow folded his hands over his desk. “Maybe you’re not so good after all,” he said. “I am giving you a choice.” 

 

 

Johanna is backstage with her narrowed eyes aflame when Caesar and Finnick wander back. 

“What’s he doing here?” she snaps to Finnick when her eyes connect with Caesar, travel up and down his form in barely-concealed revulsion.

Finnick laughs -- “He works here, Jo. Remember?” She glowers.

“Lovely to see you again, Miss Mason,” Caesar leers. “And what a gorgeous dress you’re wearing.” 

“Yeah,” she answers, “and it’s sharp enough to poke your fucking eyes out.”

Caesar tuts. “Now, now,” he reprimands. “What will the Capitol audience think of language like that?”

“Who gives a fuck?” she snarls, the collar of her dress brushing against her jutting chin, sharp, sinister, and tall. “What matters is what they think in the Districts.” She steps toward him, can’t help a savage smirk. “I hear they’re just _dying_ for material in Six.” 

Caesar stiffens, and Johanna grins. “That’s right,” she whispers, face barred in close to his now, dark eyes like knives and porcelain skin, pale scars barely visible. “Finnick told me.” She watches him, eyes darting. “He tells me just _everything_ , Flickerman.” 

“Drop it, Jo,” says Finnick, blankly, warningly, a few feet off. “Just let it go.” 

Johanna glares into his eyes a moment longer, doesn’t pull back. Ceasar smiles. 

“She can’t, Mr. Odair,” he explains. “She’s never done such a thing in her whole life.” He looks at Finnick, tearing from Johanna’s glare. “You’d know that if you watched her Games.” 

 

 

He remembers Johanna Mason vividly, her very first interview, stilted and shy, her absence in the Games, her sudden and insatiable vengeance. He remembers the first time anyone but him paid her any attention. It was when she flung an axe into the Career from Two’s stomach from eight feet off and approached his writhing body with even steps. Tore the axe from his abdomen and raised it above her head, bore it down like a vendetta against the tendons of his neck, one last whimper and the cannon’s roar. Sponsors flooded in like flies. 

She was vastly different after the Games, surly and acerbic and dark. A few years in and she was angry, too, fearless beyond the point of return. 

“How’s it feel?” she asked him once in the clean white corners of his kitchen. “Always telling secrets and never getting any in return.” She sneered, her wolf teeth bared, and swirled the wine in her glass. “Do you _love_ him, Caesar?” she asked, derisive. “Do you _love_ him oh so much?”

“If I did,” he answered, “I see I’d have to get in line.”

Johanna gripped her wineglass tighter and scowled. “There’s no one left I love,” she said, not for the first time, not for the last. 

Caesar laughed again. “Darling,” he said, “you really think you’re the only one?” 

 

 

Once, there was a girl. 

She was from Six. Her name was Marla Neer, and Caesar had loved her since he was eight years old. In the fifty-seventh Hunger Games her name was dragged from the rolls in Six, and she strode up to the podium with a dazed look in her hazel eyes and knees so shaky they could crumble. 

“I’m not going to do it,” Caesar said to Snow. “I don’t care if it’s for just this year or if it’s for forever, I’m not going to do it.” 

Snow folded his hands over his desk. “Caesar,” he began. “What do you think the chances were that Marla Neer’s name would be pulled from the ranks in District Six?”

Caesar went still at once. He did not respond.

“And what do you think the chances are that she will win?” Snow asked him. “How good do you think her odds are?”

Caesar’s mouth was closed, his lips unmoving. Every bone in his body felt brittle and cold.

“Tell me something, Caesar,” Snow implored. “How good are yours?”

 

 

“I had to watch her die,” Caesar told Finnick once, the stolen sharp-toothed kisses he whored along golden collarbones at President Snow’s high, high price, at Finnick’s, too. 

“That’s not so bad,” Finnick answered. “I’ve had to watch plenty of people die.”

“Finnick,” Caesar whispered, and he closed his eyes. “I had to _announce_ it.” 

 

 

The boy with the bread from District 12 has a politician’s smile and a real way with words. Caesar recognizes him at once.

“I, uh,” Peeta says in the interview, a perfect construction of crestfallen eyes. “I don’t think winning’s gonna help me at all.”

Caesar raises his eyebrows and he plays the game. If anything, he’s learned enough to do that. “And why’s that?” he asks.

“Because . . . she came here with me,” says Peeta, and Caesar smiles. 

Later, Snow will say, “She may be the girl on fire, but he is the boy with the words, more dangerous than ever.”

Caesar laughs -- it’s the only thing he remembers how to do anymore.

If he didn’t know better, he’d say Peeta reminds him of someone.


End file.
